Wallace Wade links UA, Duke

He coached the Crimson Tide to its first three national championships

Published: Friday, October 6, 2006 at 3:30 a.m.

Last Modified: Friday, October 6, 2006 at 12:12 a.m.

TUSCALOOSA | Alabama football players called him “The Bear" when Paul W. Bryant was still in grade school.

He won his first national championship when Bryant was only 13 years old.

A road running by Bryant-Denny Stadium is named for him and his bronze image adorns the stadium’s new plaza.

But today, 20 years to the day after his death, do Alabama football fans realize how important Wallace Wade was to Alabama football, indeed, all Southern football?

“He was just as important to Alabama football as Coach Bryant," said Bryant Museum Curator Taylor Watson.

Saturday, the two teams Wallace Wade coached to fame and glory will meet on Bryant-Denny’s turf. Duke and Alabama have gone separate ways since Wade retired from Duke in 1950. After some good years in the ’50s and early ’60s, Duke football slipped into mediocrity and then ignominy with only a brief bright spot during Steve Spurrier’s tenure as coach. Today, it’s considered among the most abysmal football programs in Division I-A.

Alabama continued decade after decade to produce top-notch teams after Wade left and was the dominant team in college football during the 1960s and 1970s. Even recent sub-par seasons are viewed by most as only an interlude.

To understand what Wallace Wade meant to Alabama football, it’s important to know what he did.

He didn’t give the University of Alabama its first significant intersectional football victory. Xen Scott did that when his Alabama team beat the University of Pennsylvania, then a football power, 9-7 in 1922.

He didn’t win the most national championships of any Alabama coach. Bryant did that.

He isn’t the Alabama coach with the most wins. Wade’s protégé and Bryant’s mentor, Frank Thomas, won more games at Alabama than Wade, as did Bryant.

What Wade did may have been more important than all of that. Along with UA President George Denny, he turned Alabama football into a brand name.

“The 1926 Rose Bowl game is the most important football game ever played by a Southern football team," Watson said. “It put Southern football on the map."

Denny wanted UA to grow and he believed it needed national exposure. He saw the press that top football programs got and figured he couldn’t buy that kind of advertising. So he set out to make Alabama a power.

Scott gave Alabama a good start with a pair of one-loss seasons and the big win over Penn. But cancer cut his life short. Denny looked to Wade, an assistant at Vanderbilt, then a southern power, to continue Scott’s success.

A Tennessee native, Wade had played at Brown University and even roomed with Fritz Pollard, one of the games first great black players, Watson said. A World War I cavalry officer, Wade was an ironhanded disciplinarian and a great believer in learning through repetition. He earned the nickname “The Bear" with his commanding presence.

He missed an undefeated season his second year at Alabama when his team got caught looking ahead to its season finale with Georgia and lost to lowly-regarded Centre College.

The next year, only Birmingham Southern scored on Alabama in the regular season during a 50-7 Alabama win. Only Georgia Tech and Mississippi State kept it close, losing 7-0 and 6-0 respectively.

But for a Southern team, an undefeated season was no guarantee of a shot at the Rose Bowl, then considered the national championship game. John Heisman’s 9-0 Georgia Tech squad had been snubbed at the end of the 1917 season.

Before the 1926 Rose Bowl, Southern football was viewed somewhat like Western Athletic Conference or Mountain West Conference football is viewed today -- obscure and inferior. The South had suffered from economic deprivation since the Civil War and was considered backward by the rest of the country.

Watson also notes that until Vietnam, Southerners were the only Americans to lose a war.

“They were considered losers," Watson said.

Up to 1925, the Rose Bowl had always selected Eastern or Midwestern teams to play the West Coast league champion. But Wade’s Crimson Tide staked its claim on the 1926 Rose Bowl with a powerful showing in the 1925 season.

Alabama played Washington, an early 20th Century powerhouse that still holds the record for consecutive wins. The Huskies were led by their star, Wildcat Wilson, and jumped out to a 12-0 lead, lending credibility to those who said Southern football just wasn’t in the same league as the West Coast.

But in a furious third-quarter blitz, Alabama took the lead 20-12 and hung on for a 20-19 victory that stunned the sporting world. Wade’s savvy halftime adjustments were a key to the win.

The entire South, perhaps even Auburn and Tennessee fans, celebrated the win. Once the Crimson Tide’s train reached the South, enthusiastic crowds came out to meet it.

Even better, Wade’s 1926 team repeated the feat and proved it was no fluke. It tied a heavily favored Stanford team 7-7 and shared the national championship with the California school.

But the success that made Wade famous haunted him over the next three year. A rival arose in Knoxville as the University of Tennessee sought to emulate Alabama’s success and notoriety. With another military man, Gen. Bob Neyland, at the helm and a great back in Gene McEver, the Volunteers defeated Alabama in 1928 and 1929 and appeared poised to supplant Alabama as the dominant Southern football power.

Fans spoiled by national championships and Rose Bowls chafed. Denny turned up the pressure. In the meantime, Duke, which had resurrected football in 1920 after a 25-year hiatus, came courting.

Wade met with Denny before the 1930 season. His five-year contract was coming to an end. He tendered his resignation effective at the end of the 1930 season.

Exactly why Wade resigned is a bit of a mystery. Years after his retirement, he told an inquiring writer that after working with Vanderbilt and then Alabama, he preferred the freedom private institutions offered. He wanted to be given free rein with a university’s athletic program, including its intramural sports, and be free of interference. Wade said his philosophy concerning academics and athletics was in sync with the Duke board of trustees.

All kinds of speculation surrounded his resignation. Some said he was miffed at the ingratitude of fans and the administration. Others said there was a dispute over where Alabama’s stadium should be built. But Watson said Wade’s explanation might hint at something else.

“George Denny was a hands-on guy in everything he did," Watson said. “From accounts I’ve heard, he was at practice every day."

Watson believes Denny may have micromanaged Wade. And Wade suggested that when he mentioned having free rein and being free from the kind of interference he experienced at a public institution.

Before leaving he did Alabama two great favors. His 1930 Alabama team went 10-0 and whipped previously unbeaten Washington State 24-0 in the Rose Bowl. In his book, “The Crimson Tide," Birmingham News sportswriter Clyde Bolton called it “one of the greatest swan songs in sports history."

Many expected Wade to stay but he kept his word and left for Duke. The second great favor he did was recommending his assistant, Frank Thomas, to replace him. Under the Notre Dame graduate’s management, the Tide hardly missed a beat.

Conventional wisdom in Alabama is that this first in a series of contentious relationships with the head football coach was more costly for Wade than Alabama. Most believe he never matched the success he had in Tuscaloosa.

In truth, Wade continued to win big. During his eight years at Alabama, his teams were 61-13-3. In his first eight years at Duke, his teams were 61-15-3.

From 1931-1941, Alabama was 85-15-5 under Thomas. From 1931-1941 Duke was 85-19-1 under Wade. Alabama appeared in two Rose Bowls during that time, going 1-1 in the prestigious game, and won a national championship. Duke appeared in two Rose Bowls and was 0-2.

The only significant difference is that the national championship eluded Wade and Duke. But his 1938 team was undefeated and wasn’t scored upon in the regular season. It didn’t surrender a score until the last 40 seconds of the Rose Bowl when Southern California managed a touchdown to defeat Duke 7-3. It ranks as one of the all-time heartbreakers in sports history.

Duke’s 1941 team also went undefeated in the regular season and played Oregon State in the Rose Bowl. With the fear of Japanese invasion hanging over the West Coast in the days after Pearl Harbor, the game was played in Durham, N.C. and Oregon State won 20-16.

The 1941 team signaled the end of Duke’s and Wade’s great run. That 11-year period included five Southern Conference championships for the Blue Devils. From 1933-1941, his teams never had more than two losses.

It all changed with the war. Wade served his country while Eddie Cameron coached Duke. The Blue Devils even beat Alabama in the Sugar Bowl in 1944.

Wade coached Duke from 1946-1950 but his record was a mediocre 25-17-4. In his book, “A Story of Glory: Duke University Football," Ted Mann offers and explanation.

“He was simply in no shape to coach and perhaps it would have been better had he stayed on as athletic director and let Eddie Cameron do the coaching," Mann writes. “He had been 'under fire,’ had spent days and nights in snow-filled foxholes in Europe, had been 'kicked around’ by some of the Army’s high brass, and had returned home to find his wife dying of cancer."

After a respectable 7-3 season in 1950, Wade retired from coaching and became commissioner of the Southern Conference. He lived out the last of his long years in North Carolina dying on Oct. 6, 1986 at age 94.

On Oct. 11, 1975, Alabama drubbed Washington 52-0 in a game commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Crimson Tide’s first Rose Bowl. At halftime Wallace Wade once more stepped onto the field at Denny Stadium along with the surviving members of the 1926 Rose Bowl team and heard the cheers of Alabama fans. They had not forgotten him or the team that put Southern football on the map

<p>TUSCALOOSA | Alabama football players called him The Bear" when Paul W. Bryant was still in grade school.</p><p>He won his first national championship when Bryant was only 13 years old.</p><p>A road running by Bryant-Denny Stadium is named for him and his bronze image adorns the stadium’s new plaza.</p><p>But today, 20 years to the day after his death, do Alabama football fans realize how important Wallace Wade was to Alabama football, indeed, all Southern football?</p><p>He was just as important to Alabama football as Coach Bryant," said Bryant Museum Curator Taylor Watson.</p><p>Saturday, the two teams Wallace Wade coached to fame and glory will meet on Bryant-Denny’s turf. Duke and Alabama have gone separate ways since Wade retired from Duke in 1950. After some good years in the ’50s and early ’60s, Duke football slipped into mediocrity and then ignominy with only a brief bright spot during Steve Spurrier’s tenure as coach. Today, it’s considered among the most abysmal football programs in Division I-A.</p><p>Alabama continued decade after decade to produce top-notch teams after Wade left and was the dominant team in college football during the 1960s and 1970s. Even recent sub-par seasons are viewed by most as only an interlude.</p><p>To understand what Wallace Wade meant to Alabama football, it’s important to know what he did.</p><p>He didn’t give the University of Alabama its first significant intersectional football victory. Xen Scott did that when his Alabama team beat the University of Pennsylvania, then a football power, 9-7 in 1922.</p><p>He didn’t win the most national championships of any Alabama coach. Bryant did that.</p><p>He isn’t the Alabama coach with the most wins. Wade’s protégé and Bryant’s mentor, Frank Thomas, won more games at Alabama than Wade, as did Bryant.</p><p>What Wade did may have been more important than all of that. Along with UA President George Denny, he turned Alabama football into a brand name.</p><p>The 1926 Rose Bowl game is the most important football game ever played by a Southern football team," Watson said. It put Southern football on the map."</p><p>Denny wanted UA to grow and he believed it needed national exposure. He saw the press that top football programs got and figured he couldn’t buy that kind of advertising. So he set out to make Alabama a power.</p><p>Scott gave Alabama a good start with a pair of one-loss seasons and the big win over Penn. But cancer cut his life short. Denny looked to Wade, an assistant at Vanderbilt, then a southern power, to continue Scott’s success.</p><p>A Tennessee native, Wade had played at Brown University and even roomed with Fritz Pollard, one of the games first great black players, Watson said. A World War I cavalry officer, Wade was an ironhanded disciplinarian and a great believer in learning through repetition. He earned the nickname The Bear" with his commanding presence.</p><p>He missed an undefeated season his second year at Alabama when his team got caught looking ahead to its season finale with Georgia and lost to lowly-regarded Centre College.</p><p>The next year, only Birmingham Southern scored on Alabama in the regular season during a 50-7 Alabama win. Only Georgia Tech and Mississippi State kept it close, losing 7-0 and 6-0 respectively.</p><p>But for a Southern team, an undefeated season was no guarantee of a shot at the Rose Bowl, then considered the national championship game. John Heisman’s 9-0 Georgia Tech squad had been snubbed at the end of the 1917 season.</p><p>Before the 1926 Rose Bowl, Southern football was viewed somewhat like Western Athletic Conference or Mountain West Conference football is viewed today -- obscure and inferior. The South had suffered from economic deprivation since the Civil War and was considered backward by the rest of the country.</p><p>Watson also notes that until Vietnam, Southerners were the only Americans to lose a war.</p><p>They were considered losers," Watson said.</p><p>Up to 1925, the Rose Bowl had always selected Eastern or Midwestern teams to play the West Coast league champion. But Wade’s Crimson Tide staked its claim on the 1926 Rose Bowl with a powerful showing in the 1925 season.</p><p>Alabama played Washington, an early 20th Century powerhouse that still holds the record for consecutive wins. The Huskies were led by their star, Wildcat Wilson, and jumped out to a 12-0 lead, lending credibility to those who said Southern football just wasn’t in the same league as the West Coast.</p><p>But in a furious third-quarter blitz, Alabama took the lead 20-12 and hung on for a 20-19 victory that stunned the sporting world. Wade’s savvy halftime adjustments were a key to the win.</p><p>The entire South, perhaps even Auburn and Tennessee fans, celebrated the win. Once the Crimson Tide’s train reached the South, enthusiastic crowds came out to meet it.</p><p>Even better, Wade’s 1926 team repeated the feat and proved it was no fluke. It tied a heavily favored Stanford team 7-7 and shared the national championship with the California school.</p><p>But the success that made Wade famous haunted him over the next three year. A rival arose in Knoxville as the University of Tennessee sought to emulate Alabama’s success and notoriety. With another military man, Gen. Bob Neyland, at the helm and a great back in Gene McEver, the Volunteers defeated Alabama in 1928 and 1929 and appeared poised to supplant Alabama as the dominant Southern football power.</p><p>Fans spoiled by national championships and Rose Bowls chafed. Denny turned up the pressure. In the meantime, Duke, which had resurrected football in 1920 after a 25-year hiatus, came courting.</p><p>Wade met with Denny before the 1930 season. His five-year contract was coming to an end. He tendered his resignation effective at the end of the 1930 season.</p><p>Exactly why Wade resigned is a bit of a mystery. Years after his retirement, he told an inquiring writer that after working with Vanderbilt and then Alabama, he preferred the freedom private institutions offered. He wanted to be given free rein with a university’s athletic program, including its intramural sports, and be free of interference. Wade said his philosophy concerning academics and athletics was in sync with the Duke board of trustees.</p><p>All kinds of speculation surrounded his resignation. Some said he was miffed at the ingratitude of fans and the administration. Others said there was a dispute over where Alabama’s stadium should be built. But Watson said Wade’s explanation might hint at something else.</p><p>George Denny was a hands-on guy in everything he did," Watson said. From accounts I’ve heard, he was at practice every day."</p><p>Watson believes Denny may have micromanaged Wade. And Wade suggested that when he mentioned having free rein and being free from the kind of interference he experienced at a public institution.</p><p>Before leaving he did Alabama two great favors. His 1930 Alabama team went 10-0 and whipped previously unbeaten Washington State 24-0 in the Rose Bowl. In his book, The Crimson Tide," Birmingham News sportswriter Clyde Bolton called it one of the greatest swan songs in sports history."</p><p>Many expected Wade to stay but he kept his word and left for Duke. The second great favor he did was recommending his assistant, Frank Thomas, to replace him. Under the Notre Dame graduate’s management, the Tide hardly missed a beat.</p><p>Conventional wisdom in Alabama is that this first in a series of contentious relationships with the head football coach was more costly for Wade than Alabama. Most believe he never matched the success he had in Tuscaloosa.</p><p>In truth, Wade continued to win big. During his eight years at Alabama, his teams were 61-13-3. In his first eight years at Duke, his teams were 61-15-3.</p><p>From 1931-1941, Alabama was 85-15-5 under Thomas. From 1931-1941 Duke was 85-19-1 under Wade. Alabama appeared in two Rose Bowls during that time, going 1-1 in the prestigious game, and won a national championship. Duke appeared in two Rose Bowls and was 0-2.</p><p>The only significant difference is that the national championship eluded Wade and Duke. But his 1938 team was undefeated and wasn’t scored upon in the regular season. It didn’t surrender a score until the last 40 seconds of the Rose Bowl when Southern California managed a touchdown to defeat Duke 7-3. It ranks as one of the all-time heartbreakers in sports history.</p><p>Duke’s 1941 team also went undefeated in the regular season and played Oregon State in the Rose Bowl. With the fear of Japanese invasion hanging over the West Coast in the days after Pearl Harbor, the game was played in Durham, N.C. and Oregon State won 20-16.</p><p>The 1941 team signaled the end of Duke’s and Wade’s great run. That 11-year period included five Southern Conference championships for the Blue Devils. From 1933-1941, his teams never had more than two losses.</p><p>It all changed with the war. Wade served his country while Eddie Cameron coached Duke. The Blue Devils even beat Alabama in the Sugar Bowl in 1944.</p><p>Wade coached Duke from 1946-1950 but his record was a mediocre 25-17-4. In his book, A Story of Glory: Duke University Football," Ted Mann offers and explanation.</p><p>He was simply in no shape to coach and perhaps it would have been better had he stayed on as athletic director and let Eddie Cameron do the coaching," Mann writes. He had been 'under fire,’ had spent days and nights in snow-filled foxholes in Europe, had been 'kicked around’ by some of the Army’s high brass, and had returned home to find his wife dying of cancer."</p><p>After a respectable 7-3 season in 1950, Wade retired from coaching and became commissioner of the Southern Conference. He lived out the last of his long years in North Carolina dying on Oct. 6, 1986 at age 94.</p><p>On Oct. 11, 1975, Alabama drubbed Washington 52-0 in a game commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Crimson Tide’s first Rose Bowl. At halftime Wallace Wade once more stepped onto the field at Denny Stadium along with the surviving members of the 1926 Rose Bowl team and heard the cheers of Alabama fans. They had not forgotten him or the team that put Southern football on the map</p>